When Alfredo Di Lelio whipped up a buttery pasta dish in 1908 to coax his wife to eat post-childbirth, he couldn’t have imagined he was creating an international sensation. What started as a richer spin on pasta in bianco (Italy’s go-to comfort food for the unwell) morphed into fettuccine Alfredo, thanks to Di Lelio’s and his descendants' masterful marketing and Hollywood royalty. Famously, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks fell for it on their Roman honeymoon and brought word back to LA. Despite its stateside reputation as a cream-laden gut bomb, the original Italian form is absurdly simple: just pasta, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and a dangerous amount of butter, all emulsified tableside into a glossy sauce. No cream, no garlic, and for damn sure no chicken or shrimp.

Today, two rival Alfredo restaurants in central Rome, Il Vero Alfredo and Alfredo alla Scrofa, claim to be the dish’s Roman birthplace, each touting original recipes and century-old photos as proof. Both have ridden a fresh wave of popularity on TikTok, where creamy pasta twirls and old school dining rooms rack up millions of views. But beyond the glitz and social media fanfare, these spots are more legacy attractions than culinary standouts. If your trip to Rome isn’t guided by a “doing it for the ‘gram” mantra, you’ll find far more satisfying pasta experiences elsewhere, where tradition isn’t theatrically staged, but genuinely lived.